This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 5/8 As far as we know, vocalist Nancy Wilson has never pulled the diva act. No preperformance tantrums. No firing her musical director during intermission. No demands for a dressing room decked out in white flowers and stocked with several bottles of pricey champagne. Of course she’s never had…

Angels in Revolt

Summer weather hasn’t quite arrived in South Florida and we have a couple of months to go before the Fourth of July. But the Sol Theatre isn’t in the mood to wait. This Fort Lauderdale-based company is setting off some fireworks of a theatrical nature in an uneven but sometimes…

Violent Femmes

At some fast-approaching point in pop culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime we have scintillating reminders of the struggle like X-2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic-book land to…

Busy Miss Lizzie

If you have never heard of Lizzie McGuire, you are not a female child between the ages of six and fourteen; nor are you a parent with a female child between those ages. For the uninitiated, then, Lizzie is the eponymous heroine of the three-year-old, wildly popular Disney Channel TV…

Food Read

John Dufresne ponders the possibilities of a bread machine. Les Standiford’s fictional detective John Deal shares his recipe for yellowtail. Poet Elisa Albo finds romance in the produce section. Thirty-five South Florida writers contributed stories, poems, and other musings about food, which of course are never just about food but…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 5/1 “Get drunk with a hunk!” exclaims the press release promoting the Miami Beach Firefighters Celebrity Bartender Night. While it’s unlikely the firemen (or women) will be raising a glass and getting sloshed alongside you, they’ll be picking up the cocktail shakers and mixing all sorts of libations for…

New Oyster Cult

“What’s the best performance you’ve seen in the last five years?” asked Michelle Heffner Hayes of her creative colleagues at a national conference of arts presenters. The executive director of the Cultural Affairs Department at Miami-Dade Community College was attempting to curate the Cultura del Lobo Performance Series for 2002-2003…

Neighborly Fashion

Now 24/7 Dazzling designer duds debut on Biscayne Boulevard Part high-fashion atelier, part curiosity shop, part funkadelic boudoir, FG Presents, designer Fernando Garcia’s store on Biscayne Boulevard, naturally attracts the residents of the surrounding schizophrenic neighborhood. Among the current fans of his sexy evening wear and thrift-shop couture for women…

B-ball Worship

Basketball is more than a sport — it’s a religion. Beyond that, it’s an addiction. Just look at what happens when young cagers get their hands on anything that bounces, rolls, or spins. The need to dribble and break ankles is deep-rooted in the soul of a true-blue hoopster. This…

No Sex For You

Thur 5/1 No Sex For You Kids learn how to say no BY JUAN CARLOS RODRIGUEZn theory, abstaining from sex is a simple proposition, but in practice the A word is a heavy challenge, especially for teenagers experiencing hormonal overload stoked by pop-culture saturation. Young bucks will be getting a…

Snap, Crackle, Shot

Fri 5/2 Robin Hill unleashes his dynamic work Thirty-seven black-and-white photographs boasting lines of poetry. Original verse set to the Celtic folk song “Whiskey in a Jar” and sung a cappella by Inner Voice. Seems a little over-the-top for British lensman Robin Hill, so well-known for his elegant images of…

Dark & Dirty

Thur 5/1 The Faint offers a rousing set Omaha, Nebraska’s the Faint has no qualms about eating worms and swallowing dirt for a good photo op. In fact its members don’t have many qualms, period. Recently in Britain’s Bizarre magazine, frontman Todd Baechle let his catsuit out of the bag,…

Blues for Vasily

Like larger human communities, theater companies have their collective strengths and limitations, their insights and their prejudices. And it’s entirely possible that those theaters that survive more than a few seasons often do so because they come to mirror their audiences’ characteristics. The Caldwell Theatre Company, long ensconced in Boca…

Break Like the Wind

They were loud once, deafeningly so–and dumbingly so, if such a thing is possible. They wore skins of leather stuffed with cucumbers of foil, towered over dwarves who danced around a Stonehenge made of pebbles, sang about women who fit like flesh tuxedos and explored the majesty of rock and…

Queer As Film Folk

The fifth annual Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival does feel a little rudderless this year without founding director Robert Rosenberg at the helm, and the extension of screenings to Fort Lauderdale can make viewing a little difficult, since the films only show once. But there are some good films…

Victor Victorious

It is rare to find a film that defies one’s expectations as sweetly and satisfyingly as Raising Victor Vargas, a coming-of-age comedy-drama from first-time feature writer-director Peter Sollett, which first premiered here at the Miami International Film Festival. The surprise isn’t in the plot — that would be too easy…

The Good Fight

Musclebound fighters all slick with sweat and Vaseline. Bruised and battered warriors raging on despite puffy welts and cramping legs. Bloody brows, cut lips — the gasp of a knocked-out brawler struggling to get to his or her feet. There is something primal about watching a really good fistfight. Our…

Events for April 24-30, 2003

Thurday 4/24 Zora Neale Hurston is one of Florida’s most important and least recognized writers. A dry and quizzical critic of a segregated America, Hurston was among the vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance before she wound up sadly working as a maid in Miami Beach hotels. North Miami’s M Ensemble…

Cuban in a Suitcase

Sandra Ramos is part of a generation of Havana artists whose visual language makes frequent reference to the dream and reality of exile. Her work, both conceptually clever and affectively sincere, often takes the form of suitcases or trunks, containing what the artist calls “a compilation of the experiences, dreams,…

Lofty Living

Sat 4/26 Lofty Living Brightly colored hot air balloons floating peacefully in the sky. Competitive balloonists lobbing sandbags at on-ground targets. Motorists swerving in and out of lanes while craning their heads out car windows. Talent shows, free pancakes, and even a towering Energizer Bunny that stands fifteen feet higher…

Filly Stakes

Sat 4/26 In a culture enslaved to the concept of the superlative, halls of fame have proliferated at an alarming rate in recent times. Even horse tracks like Calder Race Course (21001 NW 27th Ave.) boast them. This Saturday the speedy Florida-bred Chaposa Springs and her trainer Marty Wolfson will…

Asia Major

Sat 4/28 Now that Iraq, the cradle of civilization, has been bombed to bits and the remains have been hastily demolished or looted by its own citizens, what other part of the world still exists to teach us something? Remember Asia? It’s no accident the Orient is still going strong,…